“A historical painting, back in Cordom. It didn’t look the way it does now,” he clarified, crossing the roots of an ancient tree. “But something profound happened here, and it likely involved one of the Maraius sisters.”
Dead leaves crunched against the throne room floor. There was no trace of the grand courts the castle had once hosted—just a small desk to the side, where a young man in his teens was writing studiously. He watched them curiously before meeting Einré’s disciplined stare, then urgently returned to his work and doubled his pace.
“’Nother god?” Shea asked.
“My boy-servant, Ellis,” she corrected. “He will tend to any needs you might have during your stay. Guardian?”
Poe approached her, and she led him to a nearby archway, completely suffused with vines.
“The power Airia Rousow once wielded is at the pinnacle of this tower,” she said. “It has been concealed for centuries using means both natural and otherwise.”
“And that’s why I can’t sense anything?” Flynn asked.
“I have taken great pains to ensure Rousow’s legacy is preserved,” Einré replied. “She and I go back a long way. Airia mentored me—and all my sisters—when I when I first became Mystik of Growth.”
“How long have you held such rank?” Chari asked.
“Nearly thirty-one hundred years, Priestess.” Einré thought on this for a moment, adding, “Over seventeen hundred then, by your measure,” for Flynn and Jean.
Jean scrunched her face. “No—no, that ain’t right. Rousow said she held for a thousand years and she’s been outta the game for another four hundred—right?” She looked to Flynn for confirmation, and he nodded. “I don’t math good as I’d like, but even I know there’s a few hundred missin’ there.”
The goddess smiled condescendingly. “Nothing she spoke was a lie,” she said, and left it uncomfortably at that.
“Rousow’s past is her own concern,” Poe said as he stepped forward. “My only concern is the future—am I to carve my own path, Einré?”
She shook her head. “You needn’t worry yourself. Allow me some time to prepare and I shall open the way.” She started out of the room but Jean couldn’t imagine what for—the tower entrance was right in front of them.
“Yer the Mystik of Growth, ain’t ya?” Jean called after her. “You gonna will all these plants to … un-grow?”
Einré didn’t answer, and merely laughed before vanishing down a dark passage.
“I guess that’s not part of her skill set,” Zaja suggested.
“Still … what a bitch.”
“I would ask you to be forgiving of her Holiness’s eccentricities.” Ellis had approached from behind, his hands clasped together. His flowing hair had a greenish tinge, and his slender figure was wrapped loosely in Saryu-style robes. “She is long lived,” he went on, “and is burdened by woes that manifested long before any of us were born.”
Jean shook her head and sighed. “Seems like every god I meet lately makes me wanna punch ’em in the nose.”
“The fact that you can say that means none of us are having normal conversations anymore,” Zaja pointed out.
“Well, it’s true!” Jean complained. “Half the shit these guys pull, I’d have decked ’em back on Earth. Or do I have to remind ya of Yetinau and his creepy rape vibe?”
“It’s not like he would have actually—never mind, I still can’t defend that,” Zaja conceded.
“They may have been like us once, but they are nonetheless gods,” Ellis argued. “Their choices are informed by centuries of experience. It is not for us to question.”
“Has she raised you to believe this?” Chari asked. “You are yet young, but surely you know that these women parading as goddesses were mortal once?”
Ellis seemed offended. “I am older than I look, Saryu. Her Holiness, Einré, took me in when I was not yet a grown man, true—but I have been blessed with lasting youth.”
Zella had been looking around, but this captured her attention. “Lasting youth?”
“My body shall never appear to age, even if age itself kills me,” he explained. “Were I not so blessed, I might appear old enough to be your grandfather.”
Chari visibly winced at the notion. The effete young man took no offense, but his attention swiveled to Poe, who asked, “How did you come to Lady Einré’s employ? Did you possess some special skill or merit that warranted such interest?”
Ellis shrugged. “She just … picked me.”
“Picked you?” Shea asked.
“Off the streets. On my way to church.” He spoke as though it were nothing unusual.
“Talked to your mum and dad, ’least? Got their consent?”
Ellis grew uncomfortable. “Not so much ‘consent’ as, well, ‘never really found out.’”
“So, wait, you’re a runaway?” Zaja asked.
“Sort of,” he replied with a shrug. “I mean, I left a note.”
“There’s no ‘sort of’ about it. I’m a runaway. Either you are or you aren’t.”
“I think you’re blowing this out of proportion,” he said nervously. “A goddess appeared before me. I couldn’t say no, but it’s not like I was planning—”
“So she kidnapped you?” Flynn asked.
“It’s not kidnapping when a goddess does it!”
“I’ve doubts as to a divine exception to the term,” Chari countered.
Ellis visibly squirmed. “I’ve work to attend to.” He excused himself and returned to his desk, where he shielded his hand over his brow to avoid further eye-contact.
“He seems happy,” Zaja offered weakly.
“I ever get happy stuck under someone’s thumb, shoot me,” Jean retorted.
The conversation was interrupted by the sound of something hissing. A flame was dancing down the corridor Einré had earlier vanished through, and Jean’s eyes widened when she realized the Goddess of Growth was emerging bearing an old flamethrower.
“This shouldn’t take long,” she assured them, the equipment clattering as she walked by.
There was dumbfounded silence for a moment, before Jean found the words to break it. “Okay. That’s a solution.”
Einré set to work, and a blazing light filled the room until she breached the entrance and began climbing the tower stairs. As the brightness diminished steadily, Jean found herself studying Poe, who watched with intense, seemingly unblinking devotion. The fires danced in his eyes and stayed even after Einré was out of sight.
This worried Jean. She’d never cared for Poe, but a camaraderie had developed between them for all they’d endured together. Once he climbed that tower and claimed his prize, he might find no reason to stay, let alone see her to Breth to learn what became of Mack.
For all his failings, as a mortal man, Poe had at least become reliable. Could she hope the same from him once he became a god?
* * *
The spire’s inner walls were scorched black, but for the marks left by the growths that had webbed them, now spread across like veins. What remained was withered and brittle and ready to snap from the smallest brush. As Poe’s gloved hand grazed the walls, there was a tremble of anticipation. Yet his steps were heavy for the burden strung across his back, and he felt as if the Dark Sword were weighing him down, as though it knew something of what awaited and that its days were somehow numbered.
Strength before you are strong.
That was what the Dark Madam of the wretched keep had promised Poe, and he had taken it without hesitation. Fainshild Moira had paid the price, and as a boy, he had abandoned her without a second glance. As Poe climbed the steps, he no longer held any illusion that deification would set his soul free, or absolve him of what sins he’d committed.
Without this blade, you shall be the same weak boy who entered…
When Poe breached the tower’s peak,
he did not know what to expect. At first glance, it seemed he’d come into an insignificant room, and his heart raced—had Einré chosen to deny him his reward? If an icon of godhood was kept here, it did not call attention to itself. But then—
“What is this?”
It rested on a cradle at the far side of the room—an egg, large enough to fill two hands and shelled in a strange, brittle stone. Though he knew not what it was, the solution seemed apparent.
Poe drew the Searing Truth, his father’s sword, and held it in his left hand. It was a fine blade, forever sharp, with a weight to it that his Dark Sword lacked. Poe turned the blade over in his hand, then struck the butt of it against the shell, cracking it.
As it split, a thick black ooze seeped out, pooling on the floor. Poe studied it suspiciously—he had seen the substance before. He drew the Dark Sword halfway and glanced at the blade; the oily pattern on it seemed to be moving toward the ooze, as though it wished to meld. On the altar, the ooze had nearly drained, revealing a second, smaller egg within the first. He took care to examine it before acting, but it seemed no more unusual than the larger one it had been contained within.
“Is this Einré’s idea of a joke?” he spat in frustration. Nonetheless, Poe repeated his previous action and struck the shell with the butt of the Searing Truth. A light erupted from within, its fractured beams desperately reaching out. It had been contained too long and yearned to be free, craved to connect with Guardian Poe himself.
The fingers in his left hand felt weak. The golden hilt of the Searing Truth held no value to him, and he let it fall without another thought, released from familial duties. He reached out and grasped the light before him, and felt its essence sliding inside him as though he were a glove, filling every part of him and changing Poe to his very core.
His fingers instinctively tightened around the hilt of a sword crested in feathers of rose-quartz that took form in his hand. The blade itself shimmered between hues of white and blue and as Poe examined it, he realized that it was not the blade itself that had any power; it existed as an expression of all he had inherited. While he was distracted, something had crept up on Poe that he was unprepared for.
He began to scan the room frantically—he hadn’t changed locations, hadn’t even moved a step, but he was no longer certain he was standing in it. Just as he was aware of this hollow chamber, so too did he feel the stairwell he had climbed, the interior of the castle beneath it, and the landscape of the island it sat on.
As he dropped to his knees, Poe gripped his skull, trying to stifle this overwhelming sense of awareness. His demands of “What is happening? What’s been done to me?” went unanswered, and his senses blossomed onward, oblivious of his desires. He felt them soaring over the seas and over the mainland in every direction. They did nothing to illuminate the finer details—the people and all the creatures and objects surrounding them were lost on Poe—but his awareness consumed TseTsu, until he was aware of the whole world.
And it was only one of many.
As Poe’s mind throbbed painfully, he slumped to the ground and convulsed. The cruelest moment was the realization that he had become effectively immortal, and the only way to escape this agony was to endure it. He cursed Einré for abandoning him with no warning of what was to come, but tried to crawl for the stairwell just the same, desperately seeking her help.
His efforts were futile. He could not will himself to move and had only a faded sense of reality. Day and night seemed to pass as he settled into motionlessness, having merged without his noticing.
Day and night. Morning and evening. Dawn and dusk.
All had become one.
The past and the present. Where he had been, where he was. Distance had become relative to Poe, both spatial and chronological. Memory flooded his eyes, which were wet with tears. The death of his father, his claiming of the Dark Sword and surrendering Fainshild Moira. His murder of hundreds in the woods—he had thought himself hardened against the worst of this guilt, but saw it all now as though it had just happened.
“I need to escape…” he sobbed.
There were more than his own memories at play. He saw the pasts of others, the machinations that set his victims in his way, and Poe in theirs. It was coming all at once, and it was too intense to bear.
“Escape … escape…”
And as he willed it, so he did. He was gone, as though he’d never been.
* * *
By Shea’s reckoning, it took less than ten minutes to climb the spire steps and half that to come back down. Poe’s business should have concluded in half an hour—perhaps a full one, to be generous. But when she snuck up while the goddess and her attendant were away, there was no sign of Poe save for his father’s sword, abandoned on the floor. A layer of petals had wafted in through the windows, and told it had not been abandoned recently.
“He was there,” Flynn confirmed. “For a moment, I was able to sense him.”
“Where’s he gone off to?” she asked. The Searing Truth hung at her side, intended for return to its owner.
“He vanished. Poe’s gone. All we can do is wait.”
And for Flynn, that seemed that. They had been waiting for days on the speculation that Guardian Poe might return. Whether or not he did had no immediate bearing on Shea’s circumstances; she had come to another world and was only now beginning to take it in. Though Chari had nothing favorable to say about her homeland, Shea believed she could remain comfortable for a spell.
“Thought you were outta cigs?” Jean asked of Shea, who was sitting on the castle steps, smoking.
“Was. Einré said Ellis would tend our needs. Needed a smoke.”
Jean reached out and Shea, who recognized the gesture, passed the cigarette on. She had a case-full again, all hand-rolled from local leaf. She could share the one.
“Didn’t know you fancied ’em,” Shea commented.
“Usually don’t,” Jean said as she examined it. “Seems a good time, though, ya know? No damn clue what’s happenin’ once this is all done. And it looks to be done real fuckin’ soon.”
“That a worry?” Shea asked. “Figure mess handled, we travel on.”
“Nah, not so sure for me.” Jean took a drag, then passed the cigarette back. “Whole point of ditchin’ Earth was findin’ a new home. Wherever we go, though, there’re problems.”
“No perfect world?” Jean had no immediate response, and Shea pondered the notion in silence. “Seems set to be one, this Renivar bloke ’as ’is way.”
Jean laughed. “Only one where we ain’t welcome. What’s that say ’bout us?”
“Can I try?”
The two looked back and saw Zaja behind them. Shea glanced at her, then back at the cigarette pinched between her fingers before asking, “You old enough?”
Zaja walked around to the front, holding her hands up defensively. Shea couldn’t avoid noticing the discolored skin creeping out beneath her gloves, the dark pattern like paint she’d stained her hands with.
“Look,” Zaja said, “I can pretty much guarantee that I’m not going to die from smoking.”
Shea looked to Jean, who shrugged and asked, “Any fuckin’ point not to?”
“Yay, adult stuff!” Zaja grinned as she accepted the cigarette. She and Jean both watched with concern as Zaja pressed it to her lips and took a drag. After initial success, Zaja proudly proclaimed, “Hey, I’m pretty good at—” before promptly choking. As she turned away and coughed into her fist, she hastily offered the cigarette back to Shea. “Never mind. Never mind.”
Shea returned the cigarette to her lips once more before commenting to Jean. “No need for a perfect world ’ere. Glad enough to sleep without bullets ripping my bloody tent.”
“Gets down to it, I’m not really sure what I want,” Jean said. “Can’t stand boring, but I’ve been afraid for my life too much to wanna take the
chance. Maybe…” She shook her head, and groaned, “Fuck…”
“What’s”—cough—“what’s wrong?” Zaja asked, trying to clear her throat.
“Earth was the only place I belonged. Only one where I fit in, knew how shit worked and what kinda scene I could make an’ get away with. Hated it there, long before knowin’ there was anyplace else I could be. But it was home.”
“So you want to go back?”
Jean shot Zaja the dirtiest look she had in her repertoire before softening and shaking her head. “Not in a million fuckin’ years. But bein’ on this train, people who I trust … hell, even those I can’t … kept me feelin’ safer than I have in years. What’m I gonna do when it stops?”
Zaja reached out and touched Jean’s hand sympathetically. “Nothing lasts forever.”
Shea looked up at her and asked, “What of you?”
Zaja’s smile was melancholy at best. “I’d love to keep moving,” she said. “I just don’t think I’ll always be able. And I won’t let myself weigh anyone down.”
Jean borrowed Shea’s cigarette and took another drag. Shea had nothing she could say to make either feel better. When Jean offered the cigarette to Zaja, she accepted it hesitantly and took a smaller, more reluctant drag, which was followed by a small cough.
* * *
Of the three sisters—Amlia, Hapané, and Einré—only one was worshiped. Only one served as the cornerstone of a church that in the passing centuries had gradually overtaken TseTsu. Chariska Jerhas had lived a guided and sheltered life, obliged to preach to the masses of Cordom that she might conceal her own heresy, and so she had never traveled beyond the walls. But she had heard stories, and knew there were few free people left.
When she cornered Einré Maraius, she was tempted to shoot her right then, for what good it might do. The goddess would survive and could retaliate, but it seemed the only chance she might have to vicariously assassinate the goddess she’d suffered to worship all her life. But she found words, ones she hoped would pierce Einré in a way her bullets never could.
“Things on TseTsu have grown terrible in your inaction.”
Killers, Traitors, & Runaways Page 36
